Indian state-owned upstream company Oil & Natural Gas Corporation has made a "landmark" shale gas discovery at a well in the Damodar Basin in West Bengal in the country's east.
"Though the well is still under assessment, the breakthrough is significant as India is the first Asian country where gas was discovered from shale outside the US and Canada," ONGC said in a statement Thursday.
The gas flowed from the Barren Measure shale at a depth of around 1,700 meters in the RNSG-1 well near Durgapur at Icchapur in West Bengal. The well spudded on September 26, 2010.
RNSG-1 was the first of a four-well program in the Damodar Basin, where ONGC already has a presence in coalseam methane. The Rupees 1.68 billion ($36.4 million) program comprises two wells in the Raniganj sub-basin in West Bengal and two in the North Karanpura sub-basin in Jharkhand, and is expected to be completed within 520 days, ONGC said.
"The successful R&D pilot testing of first-ever shale gas on surface will put India on the shale gas map of the world," ONGC said. "It has opened up new hopes for meeting our energy needs and encouraged [us] to venture into many shale sequences in the well explored Cambay, KG, Cauvery and Assam-Arakan basins for exploitation of shale gas in the Indian subcontinent."
